The lead role in Afghanistan is being taken over by the II
Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. A transfer
of command ceremony is set for Saturday at Camp Leatherneck, the
main Marine base in the southern Helmand province where most
Marines are assigned.

At that ceremony, Camp Pendleton Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, who
has overseen the fighting by the 20,000 Marines in Afghanistan for
the last year, will relinquish that command and return home.

The number of locally based troops at war in the south-central
Asian nation will fall from slightly more than 10,000 to about
7,000 by the end of spring and down to about 2,000 by midsummer,
said 2nd Lt. Joanna Cappeto, a Camp Pendleton spokeswoman.

Among the most anticipated homecomings is the return of the
battered 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, whose nickname is the
"Dark Horse Battalion."

The approximately 950-member infantry unit was engaged in heavy
fighting in the Sangin District of the Helmand province from the
time it arrived there at the end of the summer until recent
weeks.

The region was rife with Taliban insurgents, who used the
district as a haven for illicit drug trafficking and manufacturing
roadside bombs.

In its aggressive pursuit of the insurgents, the battalion saw
25 of its members killed in action, most of them from the bombs
that are the weapon responsible for most U.S. and NATO troop
casualties.

More than 150 battalion troops were wounded, including more than
a dozen who had single- or multiple-limb amputations.

One of the men wounded in that fashion was Oceanside resident
Lt. Cameron West, a platoon leader who lost a leg and suffered
other injuries in an Oct. 15 blast while leading a patrol less than
three weeks after arriving in Afghanistan.

West, who continues to undergo therapy at Naval Medical Center
San Diego, said Tuesday that he's eager to see the battalion get
back to Camp Pendleton.

"I've been waiting for the last six months," West said. "These
are my guys and I can't wait to see them."

When the battalion gets back, commanders have ordered that it be
kept as intact as possible for three months to allow its troops to
decompress from the rigors of war and violence they
experienced.

"We won't transfer anybody until at least 90 days after they
come," said Col. Willy Buhl, regimental commander. "We are keeping
people together during that critical decompression time to enable
getting them the education and the observation and natural
decompression that occurs when you are with your buddies. They are
the only ones who can truly understand what they've been
through."

The battalion also will be closely monitored by mental health
specialists under the direction of Rear Adm. C. Forrest Faison III,
commander of Navy Medicine West and Naval Medical Center San
Diego.